Boris Vladimirovich Golitsyn

Prince Boris Vladimirovich Golitsyn (Russian: Князь Бори́с Влади́мирович Голи́цын; 6 January 1769, Moscow - 6 January 1813, Vilnius) was a Russian aristocrat from the Moscow branch of the House of Golitsyn, who fought in the Napoleonic Wars and rose to the rank of lieutenant general.

Life

Boris was the son of

Sophie Vladimirovna Stroganova, countess Ekaterina Vladimirovna Apraksina and prince Dmitry Golitsyn

.

He joined up as a sergeant in the

Dubois-Crancé in the Assembly.^[2] In 1791 Catherine the Great had ordered the whole family to leave Paris and get back to Moscow, but they first visited Rome, where the brothers were portrayed by Hugh Douglas Hamilton

.

Boris became very hostile to the turn of events and joined the Swedish army to fight against Revolutionary France. In 1794 he fought in Poland (then on the eve of its

Old Style

) - during that battle, he had fought alongside his brother Dmitry.

He was made a colonel in 1796 then major general in 1798 commanding the St Petersburg Grenadier Regiment. On 31 December 1799, he rose to his final rank of lieutenant general before resigning on 24 March the following year. He rejoined the army in 1801 and was put in command of the

Pavlovsky Grenadier Regiment in the Guards on 20 May 1802. He was made inspector of Smolensk's infantry regiments on 11 October 1803 and fought in the battles of 1805. He was badly wounded at the battle of Austerlitz

and resigned on health grounds on 7 September 1806.

As well as being a skilled musician and dancer, he also tried writing in his youth, publishing 'Aurora' and 'Diogenes and Glyceria' in The Literary Almanac in 1788 when only twenty years old. He also made the first Russian translations of works by Oliver Goldsmith and François de La Rochefoucauld. He was a friend of Gavrila Derzhavin and with him founded a literary society in 1811 called La Causerie des amateurs des mots russes to study archaisms in Russian. That society was strongly criticized by backers of Nikolay Karamzin.

He rejoined the army yet again during the French invasion of Russia in 1812, fighting at the battle of Smolensk and being wounded at the Battle of Borodino. He refused to be evacuated and died at Vilnius on 6 January 1813. His body was later moved to his family state at Viaziomy Castle near Moscow. In 1936 it was reburied in the family chapel of Moscow's Donskoy Monastery.

References

^ Tsoffka Victor. Le prince Boris Vladimirovitch Golitsyne (1769-1813). Un des premiers admirateurs de Schiller en Russie. In: Dix-huitième Siècle, n°29, 1997. Le vin, sous la direction de Jean Bart et Élisabeth Wahl. pp. 519-526. DOI : https://doi.org/10.3406/dhs.1997.2200
^ Rzewski V.S. & V.A. Chudinov Russian "members" of the French revolution // French Yearbook 2010: Sources of the history of the French revolution of the XVIII century and the era of Napoleon. M.C. 6-45.

External links

Généalogie

[1] Tsoffka Victor. Le prince Boris Vladimirovitch Golitsyne (1769-1813). Un des premiers admirateurs de Schiller en Russie. In: Dix-huitième Siècle, n°29, 1997. Le vin, sous la direction de Jean Bart et Élisabeth Wahl. pp. 519-526. DOI : https://doi.org/10.3406/dhs.1997.2200

[2] Rzewski V.S. & V.A. Chudinov Russian "members" of the French revolution // French Yearbook 2010: Sources of the history of the French revolution of the XVIII century and the era of Napoleon. M.C. 6-45.

[2]